Lek

Lek – part of the solo show Fame d’aria, curated by Matteo Lucchetti at Lia Rumma Gallery in Naples – is composed of disparate pieces in a seemingly haphazard assemblage, including a microphone stand ballasted with an anti-flood sandbag, topped with a tentacled bird lure that repeatedly inflates and deflates to the rhythm of breathing, like a bird’s crest. In addition to revealing the functional and mechanical components, the part of the work that houses the engine contains a piece of fulgurite, a mineral generated by lightning striking quartz-rich soil. In biology, Lek (“game” in Swedish) is a form of courtship by which males of a species perform to seduce females. Here, however, the love match is interspecies and centered on the impossible attempt to create a machine that allows us to listen to fish breathing inaudible to the human ear since it is at a frequency of forty hertz—and based on the process of extracting oxygen from the water through the gills, emulated by the medical respirator that alludes to assisted breathing.